I know I’m going to look back at this and think I was delusional, but right now, on March 8th 2011, I really don’t believe my life has changed all that much since learning I was about to become a father. The circumstances were not accidental, it is something I have thought about for many years, and I feel M and I are fairly well prepared to handle the eventualities of it all. Media portrayals of impending parenthood are usually filled with dread, consternation, anxiety or fill in the blank fear. I think I did have a rough sleep the first few nights, realizing that my life was going to change at some distant point in the future, but these days I sleep fine. I assumed there would be great upheaval or general craziness. I’m not complaining. I know a lot of people have medical situations that are out of their control. I’m referring to the complete lifestyle adjustment that I’ve seen happen when that first positive test result appears. For me, it just hasn’t happened.
What has been upended is our house. Sure we’d been a little slow in making changes over the past few years. I don’t think this was due to laziness, but more a sense of contentment with how things were. We had a big rush in the early days, covering up taste specific color choices the previous owners selected. There were some furniture buying expeditions and the semi monthly trips to Homegoods for ‘treasures’. Exotic vacations were the primary source of the various decorative items in the house. Every so often we’d decide something that sat in the corner disused was due for a charity run. Lately though, M (with some help from me) has been on a tear. A new working schedule has allowed copious unstructured time to comb less frequently used areas of the house, uncovering great veins of stuff that we just don’t need.
TV’s ‘American Pickers’ profiles two guys who look for houses with piles of junk in the yards. They pull up in their van, ask if they can look around and start asking what the owner (frequently an elderly man with a ratty hat) will sell his treasure for. Many times, after removing years of weeds or other layers of rusty junk, the pickers will present the old guy with something he hasn’t seen in years. At which point he remembers how much he cherishes that rusty bicycle and refuses to part with it for any price. I am fascinated by this show partly because I see a bit of myself in these old guys. I think it would be great to have a big barn filled with old tractors and jukeboxes. I’d plan on cleaning them up and displaying them or maybe selling one if I felt it was worth something. Realistically, I don’t have the time or inclination to do anything remotely along those lines. What seems quaint and fun when portrayed as old coots with valuable antiques could be presented just as easily as crushing mental disorder if someone decided to call them a hoarder. What’s the difference between an old lady in a house filled with porcelain dolls and some old farmer with a barn full of motorcycle parts? The problem is, I didn’t have any tractors, only boxes of wires, piles of broken picture frames, bags of curtain rod hardware, old magazines, older clothes, mementos from past jobs – nothing I remembered I had or anything remotely valuable. It all had to go. Rooms have been painted, framed art and pictures have been relocated. New art is up. I like the gallery and rotating display aspect of this. Much as I howl and complain during the course of these minor renovations, the results I have to agree with.
My bathroom renovation is also sort of moving along. I have decided to use butcher block for a counter top to go with a sink M and I picked up on our travels. Knowing my potential for destruction, I bought a much larger counter top than I needed and decided to cut it down to fit. In case I ruined one section, I had more than enough to start over. Someone as a local hardware store suggested I turn the job over to a local woodworker. I thought this was a good idea and contacted one. He never returned my call and in the meantime, I started to get creative. I turned the dining room table into a sawhorse, rigged a vacuum cleaner to the saw and started cutting. M was and continues to be skeptical. I have the final counter shape and size finished. I even used some of the scrap to make a backsplash. A sidesplash was also needed, so I hand-sawed 30 inches of 3” thick rock maple into two 1.5” thick pieces. This was not fun. 5% of the way through I had serious doubts. There was no turning back. There are some legendary tales of certain members of my family undertaking borderline foolish tasks when an easier way is available, and I seem to be no exception. It got done. I am proud of it so far. The final piece is to cut the hole for the sink. This could be my Waterloo, Barbarossa, Spanish Armada moment when it all goes down in flames, or sawdust. If this fails I probably won’t detonate completely, but I will definitely seek professional help. For the wood. Not for me. I don’t need that kind of help.
This was a legendary winter for us. I won’t get into tales of woe and shoveling, but I will offer one piece of advice about breaking ice off of your roof. Make sure there’s nothing underneath the icicles when you start swinging away. This includes anything that might be hanging on the side of your house. It seems that, similar to people jumping off buildings and pinwheeling off the sides as they plummet, large icicles do the same thing to houses and combing through snowbanks looking for shattered vent shrouds CSI-style is not very exciting. I’m sure the next home inspector will have something to say about our unusual looking vent shroud when it comes time to sell. I am hopeful, however for our shrubbery. Given that the last few bushes we purchased failed to thrive in the wintertime, I decided to take a more proactive approach to saving them. When the big snows came, I carefully covered the smaller bushes with garbage bags and then dug them out and uncovered them when the sun came out. Eventually this became untenable as the snowstorms piled up and I could no longer locate the bushed to rescue them. Eventually they emerged from the receding piles and for the most part they do not look like they spent the last two months buried in plastic in the dark under feet of snow. The bushes out front I cannot say the same for. They caught the brunt of the snow shoveled off of the walkway and look distinctly like someone dumped 400lbs of snow on them. The branches are mostly intact, but the footprint is more along the lines of flat instead of tree-like.
Only the spring will tell how well they handled the winter. Right about the same time we’re getting the first tips of the lilies we’ll get the Rooster hatching. This I am genuinely excited for, much in the same way a kid gets excited for Christmas or the first day of school. I probably won’t bawl or throw up though. We’ve stocked up on lots of bizarre baby gear with European sounding names. Exotic materials and clever designs all but guarantee a first round draft pick or an Ivy League scholarship, don’t they? I’m already planning adventures and activities for the little achievement machine, dreams that I hope won’t be dashed by temper tantrums or vastly differing interests. If the little man decides he really likes flower arranging I am in big trouble. I have no way of predicting these things. He seems to like kicking and thrashing about a lot. He likes it when M eats, or at least he thrashes more when food is involved. I hope he likes books – M and I have a lot of books. I hope he’s adventurous with food, but I don’t care if he isn’t. It’s easy to boil up some plain pasta if he doesn’t like whatever masterpiece M and I prepare for ourselves. Athleticism isn’t required, but it will help. He’ll probably be taller than both of us. This does worry me. I know how much I ate and still do eat. We spend a lot on food. Our cart of food for two people looks just as full as the cart with three kids hanging off of it. I can only imagine how muc more food we will be buying. I don’t know if M is prepared for it. I have tried to explain how gallons of milk disappear overnight, how cereal is eaten by the box, how I was rarely full and always hungry, but not for lack of food or eating. There was never enough. School will be interesting. I guess what I’m really hoping for is a 6foot plus nerd with a quick first step or decent putting stroke.
Yes I said nerd. I am a nerd. I’ll admit it. Another person came up in conversation and the nerd label was tossed out and I couldn’t stop laughing. Nerd fit them perfectly. Then someone pointed out that I, too, was a nerd. I denied it for a bit, searching for contradictory evidence, but I could find none. I like nerdy things. Maybe not in the comic books and role playing video game sort of way, but I love NOVA, The New Yorker, corny music, quirky movies, interesting cars, sports minutia, bow ties, and financial news. I read geeky blogs, I work in a very nerdy area of the economy, my friends are sort of nerdy, I make nerdy jokes that get lots of laughs. In high school I was in several plays and was on the academic challenge team. I’ve never ridden a motorcycle. Never driven a convertible. Never rocked a mullet. Never beaten a stranger up. I’ve never played a guitar or surfed. I was a terrible skateboarder. I’m no good at basketball. As much as I tried, I couldn’t get the cool clothes I wanted when I was younger, a fact that I somewhat feel good about now. I don’t like underground music or poetry, waxed cotton pants, civil war style beards or other hipster nonsense. I have no tattoos and other than watches, no jewelry. I’ve never worn Drakkar Noir or Cool Water or any other supposed aphrodisiac cologne. I don’t tan. I Can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t even hear the correct lyrics of songs. I like my glasses and I’m not visiting Dr Robert Leonard for that ridiculous teenager hair he touts. I guess Popeye the Sailor had it right all along.
